In the printing of labels or other material, it is common to use roller applicators having a silk screen type surface (also known as Screen Process Printing), where certain areas have been blocked, and the printing takes place by the flow of ink through the unblocked pores of the mesh material. In the formation of the roller applicator, it is necessary to take a sheet of silk screen type material and secure the edges together to form a cylindrical outer surface for the roller applicator. It has, up to the present, been the practice to use adhesives such as epoxy to secure the edges together, and this has unfortunately required the use of a distance around the circumference of the roller about 1/4 inch. Particularly for the printing of small labels, which might only be an inch or two in extent, around the circumference of the roller applicator, the requirement that the labels be uniformly spaced, and the existence of a dead space of 1/4 inch, means that all of the labels must be spaced apart by this distance, with resulting costly expenditure of paper and related materials.
Accordingly, a principal object of the present invention is to reduce the overlap required for securing the edges of silk screen type material for roller applicators together.